36 Biggles Breaks The Silence

by Captain W E Johns

  The task was purely mechanical. The aircraft was in no danger. It was, as Biggles remarked, just one of those things. What caused him more anxiety than the machine was an occasional flurry of snow. It was evident that if the weather deteriorated further they were likely to be storm-bound, and Ginger might have some difficulty in getting back.

  His only shelter would be in the hulk, and if the Swede returned to it, as seemed likely, anything might happen. The thought spurred him to greater efforts.

  As it turned out the job did not take as long as he expected, for as the work progressed the snow came away

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  more easily. Moreover, by using a long board as a lever it became possible to prise the skis free. At any rate, by the end of an hour and a half, although the skis were not entirely clear, Biggles thought that the machine would move under the power of its engines. He climbed into the cockpit for a test, for, while it was not actually snowing, visibility was now so poor that he feared further delay might make flying impracticable.

  Starting the motors he eased the throttle open cautiously. For a moment the aircraft vibrated, shuddering: then a forward lurch told him what he wanted to know. The machine was clear.

  "All right," he shouted to the others. "Get in. Bring some boards with you, Grimy. We must see this doesn't happen again."

  The undercarriage now did the work for which it had been designed. There was a certain amount of drag when the machine first moved forward, due, as Biggles expected, to ice particles still adhering to the skis; but as the aircraft gathered speed friction soon wiped them clean and the take-off became normal.

  As soon as he was clear of the ice Biggles started to turn. Visibility, he discovered, was worse than it had appeared to be from ground level, and for that reason, knowing that there were no obstructions worth considering between him and his objective, he remained within sight of the "carpet." There was no horizon. All he could see was a small area of snow immediately below him. The position of the sun was revealed by a dull orange glow. Flying on even keel at five hundred feet he headed for the hulk, smiling faintly at the thought of what Ginger would have to say about his being left alone so long. A minute or two later, looking ahead along the ice-cliff he expected to see him; but when he failed to do so he was not particularly concerned because, as he now realised, the snow

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  that had fallen would cover everything with a white mantle. Still, he thought it rather odd that Ginger did not stand up to give a wave. He half expected that he would have lit a fire to mark his position. However, Biggles could see the pile of ice that enclosed the hulk, so dismissing Ginger from his mind for a moment he concentrated on the anxious business of getting down. This, to his' relief, he was able to accomplish without mishap. He hoped sincerely that it would be the last time he would have to do it. With the gold on board the next landing would be at the Falkland Islands.

  As soon as the machine had run to a stop Grimy jumped down and thrust his boards under the skis to prevent a repetition of the trouble that had caused the delay. Biggles asked him if he had got the signal through to Algy. Grimy said that he had, but was unable to say anything more, owing to the short time at his disposal.

  "You told him we'd found the wreck?" questioned Biggles.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good." Biggles smiled. "That should bring him along in a hurry. He ought to be here in a few hours. Meanwhile we can all have a rest while we're waiting. The trouble about all this daylight is, one tries to go on indefinitely without sleep. I only hope the weather doesn't get any worse. If it does, the other machine may have a job to find us."

  While he had been speaking Biggles had been looking around with a puzzled expression dawning on his face. "Where the deuce is Ginger?"

  Grimy looked around. The Skipper did the same. Neither answered.

  A frown creased Biggles' forehead. "I suppose we've come to the right place?"

  "No mistake about that," answered the Skipper.

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  "There's the hulk," he pointed. "We left Ginger over there."

  "That's what I thought," said Biggles slowly. "Well, he isn't there now. What the dickens can he have done with himself. That shower of snow was just enough to blot out the trail we made when handling the gold. Come to mention it I can't see the gold, either."

  "Could he have got cold and gone back into the hulk?" suggested the Skipper.

  "He might have done, but with Larsen running wild I should say it's most unlikely,"

  muttered Biggles. He gazed round the landscape. "What an extraordinary thing."

  "What beats me is why we can't see the gold," put in Grimy.

  "It would have snow on it," reminded Biggles. "Where-ever Ginger may be, one thing is quite certain," he went on. "The gold will still be where we dumped it for the simple reason one man couldn't have moved it all in the time. Ginger wouldn't be likely to move it anyway, and he wouldn't allow Larsen to touch it. Still, it's very odd that we can't see it. I wonder if there's something deceptive about the visibility? It can play queer tricks in these conditions. Dash it all, the stuff must be here. Ginger must have dropped off to sleep and got a coating of snow over him. This is where we left him, over here." Biggles began walking to the spot he had indicated, his pace increasing as he advanced. But still there was no sign of Ginger. Again he looked around. Then, speaking to the Skipper, he questioned: "Are you certain this is the place?"

  "Absolutely," declared the Skipper without hesitation. "What makes you doubt it?"

  "I've got a feeling that something has changed." "What could change."

  Biggles shrugged his shoulders, unable to find a satisfactory answer to the question. In fact, the whole thing was a mystery for which he was quite unable to provide a solution. Again he stared at the frozen sterility about him, and then at the wreck, as if to convince himself that this was the place. Cupping his hands round his mouth he shouted, "Ginger!"

  There was no answer.

  Biggles, looking completely nonplussed, stared at the Skipper. "This beats anything and everything," he muttered in a voice of bewilderment. "This is the place where we left him—or else I'm going crazy."

  "Aye. This is the place all right," assented the Skipper. "We left him sitting on the stuff."

  "I know. And had he moved, or had Larsen come here, surely there would have been fresh tracks. What baffles me is there isn't a track anywhere."

  "I'd say he got browned off sitting here and went back to the ship where he could light a fire and maybe find something to eat," opined Grimy.

  Biggles shook his head. "No. He didn't do that. You heard what he said. I'm sure nothing would have induced him to go near the hulk—at any rate, not while that madman is at large."

  The Skipper drew a deep breath. "I give it up."

  Biggles showed signs of exasperation. "The whole thing is absurd. He must be here. He wouldn't leave of his own accord, and ruling out Larsen, there's nobody here to make him move." Biggles walked on a short distance towards the open water. "He couldn't have gone that way, anyhow," he declared.

  "It he had he wouldn't have taken the gold with him," observed the Skipper.

  "That's what I mean," returned Biggles helplessly. "I've seen some queer things in my time but this beats them all."

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  The Skipper let out a real seaman's hail.

  There was no reply. The sound died away, leaving the sullen silence even more oppressive than before.

  "If he was within half a mile he would have heard that," asserted the sailor. He looked at Biggles. "This reminds me of the Flying Dutchman," he said nervously. "You remember—"

  Biggles broke in. "Now don't start any more superstitious nonsense," he requested curtly. "There's nothing supernatural about this." He strode away to the hulk. He did not stop when he reached it but went straight on down the companion-way. In a minute or two he was back. "He isn't there," he announced.

  "There's nowhere else to look," said the Skipper.

  "I
f only the sky would clear I'd take the machine up and have a look round, but it's no use doing that in this infernal murk," said Biggles irritably. Taking out his pistol he pointed the muzzle skywards and pulled the trigger. The report seemed dull and lifeless, but he listened for a reply. From far away out over the open sea came a faint report. He looked at the Skipper.

  The Skipper shook his head. "Echo," he murmured. "You get an echo from a big iceberg—or perhaps you could get one from that cloud just over our heads."

  Biggles looked dubious, but agreed that it was hardly likely that Ginger could have taken to the open sea, with the gold. Putting the pistol in his pocket he remarked: "There must be an explanation of this. We've got to find it. That's all about it."

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  IX

  WHAT HAPPENED TO GINGER

  THE explanation of Ginger's uncanny disappearance was really perfectly simple. It may have been its very simplicity that caused it to be overlooked.

  The statement that he had been left sitting on the gold was correct. He had not moved.

  There was no reason for him to move. He had no desire to see the inside of the hulk again so there was really nowhere for him to go even when he had become bored with sitting on his golden throne; and as the time passed he became very bored indeed. Not only was he bored, he was worried. He had, as he thought, heard the machine take off. It had not arrived. Obviously, something had gone wrong, and he nearly worried himself sick wondering what it could have been. But there was nothing he could do about it.

  Walking about would not help matters, so as he had no wish to collide with the deranged Swede he remained where he was, satisfied that Larsen would not be able to get to him without showing himself. His thoughts became sombre as he perceived all too clearly what his position would be if the aircraft never came. In that event, he pondered moodily, history looked like repeating itself. He would have to shoot Larsen or have his brains knocked out by an axe in the hinds of a maniac. The prospect, he decided, was grim. He looked more often at the hulk, which he could just see in the bad light. Through the gloom, the pile of ice looked unpleasantly like a monstrous crouching apparition.

  His fears took a more material turn when suddenly he 87

  experienced a queer sensation that the gold on which he was sitting had moved slightly.

  It was only the merest tremor yet he had been conscious of it. Or he thought he had. Was his imagination playing tricks? Why should he imagine such a thing? How could the gold move, anyway? Were his nerves in such a state? He stood up to rouse himself from the lethargy into which he had fallen, and tried to shake off the mood of depression which, he thought, must have been responsible for the illusion of movement. He promptly sat down again. He had not intended to. The movement was involuntary, induced, it seemed, by giddiness. Then he thought he understood. He was ill. Something was the matter with him—probably a recurrence of malaria contracted in the tropics. The idea took firm root when, a minute later, he experienced another quite definite wave of nausea, brought on by a feeling that the ground was rocking under him. Did they have earthquakes in the South Pole he wondered vaguely? Was that the answer? It seemed not impossible. Other countries had earthquakes, why not the Poles?

  Cupping his chin in his hand he gazed across the desolation at the hulk. And as he looked at it his forehead puckered in a frown. Was it more imagination, or was the ice-encased ship farther away than it had been? Perhaps visibility had disimproved. That might produce such an effect. Then he noticed something else, something that brought him to his feet in haste. Between him and the hulk had appeared a black, irregular line, a line that widened as it appeared to cut a zig-zag course across the ice. He stood on the gold for a better view, and then he understood. A portion of the main pack ice had broken away, and he was on the piece that had come adrift.

  Wondering why he had not realised at once what was

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  happening he ran towards the line 'of water that now separated him from the mainland.

  His one concern was his personal safety. By the time he had reached the water he saw to his consternation that it was already some eight or ten feet wide, which was too wide for a jump from such a slippery take off. Swiftly his eyes ran along the gap. They stopped when they came to a place where it was still only two or three feet across. He raced towards it. But the ice was moving, too, and by the time he had reached the spot the gap was again too wide. He ran on, still looking for a place where he might get across, hoping even to find a spot where the floe had not actually parted from the parent ice.

  There was no such place. In sheer panic now he tore along the edge of his floating island; but it was no use. Everywhere the gap was too wide, and every passing second saw it wider. Bitterly he regretted that he had not risked a jump while there was still a chance.

  Breathing heavily he stared at the black water, six feet below him. There could be no question of swimming. The cold would be paralyzing. In any case, it would be impossible to climb up the sheer face of ice. So there he stood, his thoughts in a turmoil, watching the gap yawn ever wider with slow, relentless force. The hulk, his only landmark, became an indistinct object in a white, shadowless world. Presently that too disappeared.

  He knew there could be no other way of escape, but in sheer desperation he looked for one. All around were floes, rafts of ice like the once he was on. All appeared to be motionless, but he knew they must be moving. Some were quite close, but all were detached, so there was no point in leaving his own. In the end he had to face the fact that there was nothing he could do. Indeed, as far as he could see there was nothing anyone could do, for while the floe he was on was not small, it was not big 89

  enough for the aircraft to land on even if Biggles should discover his predicament. He had, he thought, one chance, provided Biggles came quickly; for the gap between him and the mainland told him that the flow was moving ever faster, presumably as it felt the affect of a current. The aircraft, in view of its long over-water journey, carried as part of its equipment a collapsible rubber dinghy. It would take a little time to inflate and launch, and the employment of it in the floating ice-fields would be risky, for not only might it be crushed between two pieces of ice but one small piece of the razor-edged stuff would certainly puncture it. But before it could be used Biggles would have to find him; and there was good reason to suppose that Biggles himself was in serious difficulties or he would have been back long ago.

  The floe was now some distance from the stable pack-ice, and he had an idea that his drift was towards the north-east. Visualising the map he perceived that if the floe maintained that direction it would eventually bring up against the long, north-pointing arm, of the Graham Peninsula, the best part of a hundred miles away. What would happen then was a matter for speculation. It would not affect him, anyhow, because long before the ice had travelled that distance he would have died from hunger and exposure.

  Should the floe find itself in the grip of a more northerly current—as obviously some did, for he had seen them on the way down—then the ice would eventually melt, dropping him and the gold into the deepest sea. The gold! He laughed bitterly. He could now understand why Last, when he had made his desperate bid for life in a small boat, hadn't bothered about the gold. At that moment Ginger would have swopped all his gold bars for a dinghy, no matter how dilapidated as long as it would float for twenty minutes.

  Standing on the edge of the ice, as near as he could 90

  get to the main pack, he watched it gradually fade into the background. He knew it was no use shouting, for Biggles was not there to hear him. It was ironic that the only man who might be within hail was a raving lunatic. After a while, realising that he could do no good by standing there, he walked slowly back to the gold and sat down to think the matter over. Not that there was much to think about.

  So this, he pondered miserably, was the end of their adventure—at any rate, the end of his. How many mariners, he wondered, had found themselves in the same melancholy plig
ht, since men had begun their search for the great Southern Continent hundreds of years before his time. A good many, no doubt. And there would be more. Something of the sort had happened to Larsen. He had managed to get ashore, and a lot of good it had done him. Ginger could only hope that his fate would not be so long drawn out. A ghastly picture of himself and Larsen fighting it out in the hulk for possession of the gold, as Last and Manton had done, floated into his mind. He dismissed it with a shiver, perceiving that such thoughts were a certain way to madness.

  Biggles, he feared, would never comp now. Something had happened to him. He could not imagine what it was. The engines, which he had heard, seemed to be in order. Was he, too, marooned somewhere in this dismal world of everlasting ice? How he hated the stuff. All around him he could hear it growling and crunching as the floes ground into each other. Once he watched it happen, quite close to where he sat. He saw the ice splinter as the two pieces drove against each other; watched them locked in frozen embrace drift away into the murk. From an inside pocket he produced a bar of chocolate.

  , He ate it slowly and deliberately, and was surprised to find that he could do so without emotion, although it was

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  probably the last thing he would ever eat. He was almost glad that he had no provisions with him, for they would only prolong the inevitable end.

  He did not take account of the passing of time, but it must have been about an hour later that he heard a sound that brought him to his feet with a rush. It was the drone of an aircraft. It sounded a long way off, but in his desperate case it brought a new hope, for it did at least tell him that Biggles was still alive. Listening he heard the aircraft take off, which meant that the machine was, after all, still airworthy. He could not see it, of course; it was too far off for that; but he could more or less follow its course. He judged it was on its way to the hulk. He waited for it to land, but when it did he was appalled by its distance away. It seemed impossible that he could have drifted so far in so short a time. Or was the sound deceptive, muffled, perhaps, by the low cloud? He could not even hazard a guess as to the actual distance in terms of measurement. It might be a mile, he thought; it might be two or even three. Taking out his pistol he fired a shot into the air and listened for an answering shot. None came. He knew the sound would be very faint, too faint to be heard if Biggles or the others happened to be talking, or making a noise of any sort.